Cover Spotlight
EVERY HEAD WE’VE HAD THE PLEASURE TO KNOW
Some of our favorite spotlights from 2012 Compiled by Mike Cormack
Over the course of 2012, we’ve had the pleasure of meeting and profiling dozens of Beijing’s finest, in fields from haute couture to finance, from hospitality to high tech. With the talent field in Beijing only ever increasing Patrick Chovanec, Tsinghua professor and blogger at chovanec.wordpress.com Thomas Orlik of the WSJ wrote a book about reading China’s economic indicators. How much of a problem is the opacity of the system? The National Bureau of Statistics says China has a long way to go in statistical measuring. It’s something of a black box. Sometimes rules change and nobody is told, and they don’t revise the figures to take account of that – this has even happened with the monetary measure M2. A lot of statistics are fed to people from local officials with vested interests. So even if they’re
trying to be honest, it’s difficult. You can’t take anything on face value and have to see it all as a mosaic. Much of what I do is gather data points and extrapolate from that to form a story.
Paul Gilis, Peking University professor and blogger at chinaaccountingblog.com I am a professor at the Guanghua School of Management. I teach China’s future business leaders. It is an awesome responsibility, and wonderfully rewarding. I mostly teach in our International MBA program, where students from all over the world come to learn China and to get a top ranked MBA education. One of my goals is to keep the kids off the street – Wall Street. Too many of our graduates end up in finance, yet the world desperately needs their talent directed towards more important problems. I encourage students to find careers that will build business, create jobs and Street pays too well, and we do a pretty good solve social problems. It is tough, because the job preparing them for life there.
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